Braking and steering assistance devices for motor vehicles which assist the driver in critical situations or automatically carry out a steering intervention or intervention into the vehicle braking system are already known from the prior art. For example, DE 10 2008 019 781 A1 describes, for example, a method for avoiding collisions. In this context, firstly an obstacle on a roadway is detected and subsequently the information about the obstacle is passed on to vehicles located in the vicinity by means of vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Vehicles which have the information about the obstacle output a warning to the driver or automatically carry out a braking maneuver or avoidance maneuver.
DE 10 2008 048 163 A1 discloses a vehicle system for recording and avoiding collisions. For this purpose, the vehicle has ultrasonic sensors which are mounted in the front region and/or lateral region and detect obstacles as soon as they are in sensor range. If an imminent collision is detected, the system can carry out automated steering processes for the purpose of avoidance and/or braking processes for stopping before an obstacle.
All the systems known from the prior art are subject to disadvantages insofar as they strongly brake the vehicle or even bring it to a standstill by means of an intervention into the vehicle braking system, which creates a risk of tail-end collision for the traffic traveling behind, or such a marked change in direction of the vehicle is brought about by means of an intervention into the vehicle steering system that an additional intervention of the ESP system to stabilize the vehicle becomes necessary.
The object of the present invention is to avoid a collision in a driving situation of a vehicle with only little lateral distance from a collision body without in the process creating, as a result of the intervention, an additional hazardous situation for other road users.
This object is achieved according to the present invention by means of the method and the distance control device described herein.